Erosion allows water to flow through Eugene Wenke's land in southeast Iowa. Keeping an eye on the situation is Wenke's stepdaughter, Cassidy Jo Brotherton. / Special to the Register

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Eugene Wenke stands on the narrow driveway on his nearly 70-acre spread near the Missouri border. In the background is the lake that floods his property, cutting off access from his house to the road. / Lee Rood/The Register

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MOUNT STERLING, IA. — Eugene Wenke’s near-70-acre spread a stone’s throw from the Missouri border is a country boy’s dream.

There’s fertile ground for planting, natural wetlands for livestock and wildlife. Across the road there’s a lake that’s surrounded by timber.

Except there’s one problem. At this time of year, the private, man-made lake — a water retention area that’s part of the sprawling Indian Creek Watershed Project — swells when the rains come. Twice since 1990, the muddy water has spilled over the road in front of Wenke’s rustic home and stranded his family.

It’s the sort of thing that’s not supposed to happen for 100 years or more, according to the flood-mappers, he said. But the water came dangerously close to doing so again just this month while I was visiting.

So here are the questions Wenke, a 55-year-old truck driver and railroad man, called me down to southeast Iowa to explore:

• Why won’t Van Buren County make good on a years-old agreement, forged after supervisors took part of his land for the watershed project, to give him a wider easement on the narrow drive leading up to his house?

• When will supervisors take seriously the need to stop the flooding and further erosion east of that drive, caused when water rushes down a spillway that runs through Wenke’s property? “I want them to finish their unfinished business,” he said. “I just get so angry I want to pull my hair out.”

For years, he said, he has been fighting with the county to bring closure to problems that began when supervisors condemned a swath of his land for the watershed project in 1988.

The project made way for a county road that essentially acts as a dam for water in the wetlands area and created the lake. But the project also left him with only one way to access his property, instead of the previous three. That drive, which is 12 feet wide, leads up to the house he built with his own hands.

What’s ironic about the situation is that Van Buren County, aided by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, undertook the project more than two decades ago to slow siltation, erosion and flooding in the area. Now, all those problems have worsened, Wenke said.

“It takes a six-inch rain these days to go over the road now,” he said.

Before the lake was created in 1990, excessive water would flow under a bridge near Wenke’s home and flooding was never an issue, he said. Now, the reservoir not only floods over the county road, during dry periods the road halts water from flowing onto his property to feed livestock.

Mark Meek, chairman of the Van Buren County supervisors, said Wenke has made his case many times.

Meek acknowledged Wenke likely has a point.

“I think he’s been plain lied to in the past. I’m sure there were some promises made way back when that were never kept,” Meek said.

No one disputes, at least anymore, that the county and the conservation service are responsible for taking care of erosion on what used to be Wenke’s property, Meek said.

But Wenke and the supervisors have also disagreed on where property lines begin and end, even though that was supposed to have been recorded years ago.

“We’re going to hire a surveyor soon,” Meek told me.

Meek says he’s been on the board about two years, and he knows the problems on Wenke’s property go back decades. He has come to question himself whether the retention pond accomplishes what it was intended to do.

“It was supposed to prevent siltation from getting into the streams,” he said. “But sometimes I wonder if that was actually a valid reason, because it’s used for recreation a lot.”

T.J. Mathis, a conservation officer with the NRCS, said the lake — he calls it a “structure” — and road were built primarily for flood control. Whether the goal was achieved is another question. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I wasn’t here at the time they were built, so I don’t know what was done at the time.”

Mathis said the conservation service had the money last year to reshape and reseed the area east of Wenke’s driveway to stop the erosion problem. But Wenke wouldn’t allow access to his land, Mathis said.

Wenke said that was because of the property line dispute. “If the fence out there is the boundary line, the county needs to pay me for damage to my land. If it’s their property, they should have maintained it,” he said.

Regardless, both Meek and Mathis say they want to resolve the conflict soon.

Wenke hopes so. According to the law, he said, he needs a 30-foot easement to legally get modern machinery on his farm, and that’s what supervisors promised years ago. After the area washed out a first time in 1993, a supervisor put that agreement in writing, he said.

In the meantime, Wenke remains convinced flooding over the road is going to get worse.

Right now, he said, no signs warn cars they could get swept away on County Road J56, also called 292nd Street. Yet he believes it will happen. “Anybody driving down this road in the middle of the night would have no warning,” Wenke said. “Somebody’s going to get hurt.”

Lee Rood’s Reader’s Watchdog column helps Iowans get answers and accountability from public officials, the justice system, businesses and nonprofits. Contact her at lrood@dmreg.com or by calling 515-284-8549. Read past reports at DesMoinesRegister.com/ReadersWatchdog.